ITALIAN Interior Minister Matteo Salvini took a savage dig at Emmanuel Macron over his failure to respect European immigration agreements as the French President met Pope Francis in Rome to discuss migration on Tuesday.

The die-hard eurosceptic said in a statement sent to Express.co.uk it was "too easy" for the French President to meet the Pope in an attempt to appear to come up with a solution for the migration crisis hitting Europe.

The Italian Deputy Prime Minister blasted Emmanuel Macron as the EU leader claimed "France has no lessons to learn from anybody" on migration in an ongoing spat between the pair.

Mr Salvini demanded the French President opened France's borders to 9,000 migrants from Italy.

He said: “If Macron thinks there is no immigration crisis in Italy he should open his doors to the 9,000 migrants France agreed to welcome from Italy in accordance with signed European agreements.

“It’s too easy to get a picture with the Pope and then failing to respect our agreements and rejecting women and children at the border.

“French arrogance is no longer in fashion in Italy.”

On Sunday, 16 EU leaders, including Matteo Salvini and President Macron, met in an emergency mini-summit to tackle the migration crisis.

Speaking to reporters after the summit, President Macron said: "France has no lessons to learn from anybody, we are the second country welcoming asylum seekers this year.

"And it's in that mood that I want to go forward with all the colleagues who are ready to offer a solution that respects our history, our rights, and allows us to make progress. We also have to look for efficiency."

French arrogance is no longer in fashion in Italy

Matteo Salvini

The French President met Pope Francis in Rome on Tuesday reportedly to talk about migration, the future of Europe and the world's environmental challenges.

A Vatican statement said the two discussed "protection of the environment, migration, and multilateral commitment to conflict prevention and resolution, especially in relation to disarmament".

It was also revealed that the pair discussed the prospects for resolving conflicts in the Middle East and Africa as well as the future of Europe.

Last week, the Pope urged nations to welcome all the migrants they could.

This year more than 58,000 migrants have arrived in Italy and 1,569 have died

Thu, June 29, 2017

An estimated 230,000 refugees and migrants will arrive in Italy this year as numbers of refugees and migrants attempting the dangerous central mediterranean crossing from Libya to Italy continues to rise since the same time last year

Refugees and migrants wait in a small rubber boat to be rescued off Lampedusa, Italy

Mr Salvini had previously claimed “Macron's risks are making his country Italy's Number one enemy on this emergency" after the French President suggested European cooperation had managed to cut migration flows by close to 80 percent and problems stemmed from "secondary" movements of migrants within Europe.

The French President denied Europe was faced with a migration crisis at all compared to large flows of people seeking refuge in Europe in 2015.

He said: ”The reality is that Europe is not experiencing a migration crisis of the same magnitude as the one it experienced in 2015.

“A country like Italy has not at all the same migratory pressure as last year.

"The crisis we are experiencing today in Europe is a political crisis tied to secondary movements between European countries."

Matteo Salvini, on the other hand, claimed his country had faced 650,000 arrivals by sea over the past four years, 430,000 asylum requests and the hosting of 170,000 "alleged refugees" for an overall cost of more than £4.4million.